University owed $28,000 over computer glitch
A computer glitch allowed thousands of Carleton University students to do their laundry for free, but the university is making them pay the money back.
When doing laundry, students swipe their identification cards into a pay machine and then enter the number of the washing machine they used. However, due to a glitch in the system, if students entered the number for one particular washing machine, their cards would not be billed for the laundry. Thousands of students began entering that machine’s number regardless of which washing machine they actually used. “As a student you just gotta kind of go for the cheapest route. And if that comes down to kind of screwing the laundry machine for free laundry machine services … then of course why wouldn’t you, right,” one student told CBC News.
Unfortunately for the students, the university learned of the free laundry scam, and is now demanding students retroactively pay for washing their clothes. Because “no one volunteered the information” Ed Kane, Carleton’s assistant vice-president of university services, says “we’ve really had to go back and retroactively bill them and bill their cards directly for the charges.”
The university is out $28,000.